Gilmoy's 0.40 Nags: UI improvements and feature requests

Odds and ends from my "Bene Deux" game.

1. (UI request) Planet Manage screen displays each axis's total bonus in header bar

When I micromanage a planet, the most common action is to reassign excess production, i.e. from the main axis (one with highest +% bonus) to the secondary axis (2nd highest bonus). But I can't tell the secondary from the tertiary without hovering.

A forgeworld with mp +180%, rp +45%, bc +20% should spend most of its effort producing mp. Excess capability should be assigned to rp.

However, you can't tell at-a-glance which is a planet's secondary axis. And when you zoom through a list of 10+ planets once every turn, you can't remember them all.

Current work-around: For each planet { for each axis { hover }; compare }. This sucks.
Sweeping your gaze without effort = win. Display-on-demand introduces a cognitive burden. Drilling, clicking, or hovering all defer information until you act, and then you can see only 1 at a time. Both restrictions chafe.

Hence, some decision-critical information should be always-visible. Details can remain in the tooltips.

For each production axis, display its total bonus % in its header bar.
You could also define this total bonus % widget to be the tooltip hover target (for the detailed bonus breakdown). That would solve the aggravating/time-wasting UI flaw of peekaboo tooltips.

Axis bonuses in header bar

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Gilmoy

Join Date 12/2009

+41

2. Don't waste excess Better UI for technology points from Ideology awards.

Or, more generally: Add a tech queue, and make all queues lossless.

Anecdote / case study (yah, this actually happened just now):

I play all-Benevolent. On T122, I colonize my 16th planet to reach (160 - 50 bug = 110)/0/0 Ideology.
I unlock tier 3 Empathy (107 Benevolent points), which gives Missionary Center. Tier 3 cost increases to 116.
I promptly start building 7 of them. Each Missionary Center gives +5 Benevolent when completed, +1/turn thereafter(!!).
My current tech level is nearly done, in ~50 rp (after this turn.)
On T123, I complete 1 Missionary Center g(= 115/0/0), and just-miss completing a 2nd. Sidebar:

(Round-off bug) When a queue says "1 turn" to complete, sometimes it's lying. Next turn, your build queue Buy cost is at "0 bc", but it's still considered incomplete. In other words, you missed by 0.1. (Conjecture: the queue UI display rounds off one way, but the turn update engine rounds off the other way. Sounds like duplicated code functionality that slightly diverged and got out-of-sync, instead of extracting it to one class or routine and having both modules call it.)
Work-around 1: For a tile or shipyard queue, click "Buy" (it costs you 0 bc, by definition), assign production to something else for 1 turn. For tech, assign at least 0.1 rp.
Work-around 2: Save before every Turn. Reload, add 0.1, click Turn. (I always do this.)

So I missed by 0.1. Reload, click, re-end Turn. But now ...
... completing 2 Missionary Center takes me to 120/0/0 ... which forces me to take Benevolent tier 3 Breakthrough at 116!
This forces me to take +150 rp [Bug: Breakthrough actually awards 300 rp] ... when I need only ~50!
It completes my current tech level (exiting the Ideology screen takes me directly to the technology newsbot). I choose another tech, but ...
[Update] ... and I think that the excess points were applied to it (which happened to complete it exactly). Exiting the Technology screen immediately took me back to the newsbot, and then asked me to choose a 2nd new tech.

Specifically: I had ~50 rp remaining to finish Interstellar Banking. Breakthrough gave +300, which finished that instantly, and left +250 or so. I probably took an Industrial Specialization for ~252 rp. By coincidence, that exactly completed it also, and left ~0 rp for my 2nd new tech. Hence, it gave the impression that there was no carry-over.

I really, really hate it when any production gets lost. From a Dev Stream comment ~08/01 or so, Paul was bragging about the new Ideology tree, and how every Tier 5 award was intended to be ba-rokenly game-breaking. They're supposed to be over-the-top, I-win-now kind of things. If you pay to get them, you deserve it. For Benevolent tier 5 Quantum Leap ("1000 free research points"), he bragged, "That's 3 late-game tech levels!!" [Edit: Maybe his private build already tweaked Quantum Leap to give 10,000 rp? Age of War techs already cost 827 rp, so an Age of Ascension tech must be up around 2-3k.]

Work-around: Reload, subtract 0.1, re-end Turn. It's actually better to not complete the 2nd Missionary Center yet. Now I can finish my tech normally (this turn), finish that MC, and next turn choose a big fat tech level (in Age of War, whee!), and then unlock Breakthrough.

Update: I did that, and finished Interstellar Banking last turn. Now whether I choose Ideology or Technology first, I think it doesn't matter. (Once you open the Ideology screen with 160 pts, you cannot leave it until you unlock Breakthrough.) In fact, there is a "Beta UI" for choosing multiple techs: it's just totally quiet.

Remember in your head that you now have a "Breakthrough surplus" of 300 rp. Go shopping, as on Wheel of Fortune.
Exiting Ideology will automatically take you to Technology. Choose wisely; there is no redo.
Exiting Technology will instantly apply your surplus rps to your new tech.

If this completes it, then you get it instantly, and you loop back to the newsbot (and then choose another tech).
Otherwise, your remaining surplus rps partially-fill your tech progress bar.

While your surplus rps > 0 (this is not shown anywhere), opening Ideology has no further effect (since you already unlocked Breakthrough), but exiting it automatically takes you to Technology. (This can be confusing when you're in a where's-my-rps panic.)

Surely Beta 2+ already has a better UI to inform you during this process.

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